homicide episodes 13, 14, then i lost count

The most interesting locale in episode 13, 'Aftermath', is the airport we then called Melbourne Airport and now call Essendon Airport. In episode 14, we are introduced to the most classic ad man ever, Mad Men to the max, Kevin Sinclair as played by Denis Doonan. 

You may be surprised to hear that this was pretty much Doonan's last big acting job aside from the film The Set (1970) and it's possible he worked through most of the 60s and into the early 70s as a real estate agent, but he found his proper role in life as Mr. Margaret Fulton. Fulton is the first woman I have encountered on wikipedia whose daughter is named, but whose husband isn't. But below there they are in the Sydney Morning Herald for 12 January 1978 (p. 3). 

The following episode is pretty standard stuff: a crooked babysitting group, murder of a waterskiing teenager with a stolen motorboat, and a bunch of bikers terrorising Elwood. (By the way I've been meaning to mention that my tv stretches out all my episodes of Homicide; either there's no way of changing the aspect ratio or I just can't work out how to do it; just relax). In this episode, not that the pictures really demonstrate this, I couldn't get it out of my mind that this woman might be, or might be related to, Colette Mann:

It's really not her because Colette Mann was born in 1951 and this was made in 1965, and the actor is Judith Arthy - who was already having a not inconsiderable career. But the weird thing is that the character's name is Peggy Mann. 

Not wishing to take away from Judith Arthy's great performance here, I did go down a little rabbit hole trying to establish whether there was a Colette Mann - Judith Arthy connection. What I did find was this gorgeous snippet, from the Ballarat South Street competition 1957 (Age 10 September 1957 p. 5, to be exact):

She got an honourable mention in 'song and dance solo' the next day. The South Street competition was some kind of annual talent show. I know this because over fifty years before many of the DeGaris siblings were competing in it, mainly in recitation. As I relate in my CJ DeGaris book, which for all I know may come out this year, CJ used the South Street competition at least once to hook up with the girl he had a 'friends with benefits' (yes I use that phrase in the book, soz) relationship with late in his teens. I was then super disappointed that this following was not the next time Colette Mann was mentioned in the papers (an item from the Sydney Sun-Herald 25 February 1968, p. 13), because it was actually about Colette Estermann:

Tbh I was only excited by the idea of Colette Mann being in the same room as Pussy Von de Var, easily the best name I have heard for a man, woman or cat (or dog) in a long time. CM next appears in the paper as a bridesmaid and then singing on a Digby Richards album and then in the cast of Godspell alongside Marty Rhone and THE REST IS HISTORY. 

Judith Arthy, in any case, was already up and running as an actor in 1961 when she appeared in the first (?) performances of The One Day of the Year (this from the SMH 15 April 1961 p. 20)

'A.W.', reviewing the show in the SMH on 27 April 1961 p. 9 said that Arthy's performance as 'the girlfriend' was 'a little too mannered to be true', but what was the last play you saw A. W. in? Reviewing her in Period of Adjustment in September the same year, 'R. C.' said that she mixed her accents unmercifully and tried 'far too hard in her distressed early scenes' but then 'found a much more satisfactory equivalent for newly awakened tenderness in the last act.' (SMH 7 September 1961 p. 9). She was then in Puss in Boots and got panned for that too, basically (SMH 26 December 1961 p. 5). So 1961 was a big year for her reading shitty reviews of herself in the Herald. 

Anyway Peggy Mann is not even the most important character in this episode, lots of calling the police on telephones and hanging up before she gets to say what she wants to say, but this does look like it would have been an amazing teleplay doesn't it:

(From the Melbourne Age 20 March 1963 p. 25) (below: SMH 3 June 1963 p. 11)

'R. C.' described Arthy's performance in this 'pointless sensation-seeking' production as 'reasonably competent', so she must have felt she was going up in the world (SMH 13 June 1963 p. 12). A-a-anyway, after I scrolled through many more mentions of Judith Arthy no doubt being raked over hot coals justifiably or otherwise I don't know, I found the actual thing I was really looking for i.e. mention of this episode of Homicide which was screened the week after I was born and which I would have found very interesting because, as mentioned, it was shot in Elwood and that was really only a crawl from where I was living at the time. This from the Age TV Radio Guide 22 April 1965 p. 1:

The same week (but in Sydney so I don't know if I would have been able to see it) the following line-up appeared on channel 2: 

SMH 26 April 1965 p. 17. I mean Ann(e) Charl(e)ston and Judith Arthy what a line-up and in a Hal Porter story no less, plus Eric Sykes who's always funny and Country and Liberal Party spruiks, I would have been in clover. Of course, you don't remember what you watched on tv in the first week of your existence but I just know I would have loved this line-up. Anyway, back to Homicide. 

This is a scene where the bikes threaten the dead girl's Aunt Olive. One of the odd things about Homicide is that everyone gets over other people's deaths very quickly, I suppose because it's a short program and there's not much time for tears/troubles if a murder is going to be solved and then the killer prosecuted and then they need to have time to banter at the end about dry cleaning. In this episode though the only real banter is between the police: youngster Rex and his older colleagues Frank and Jack about whether motorcycles lead to lawlessness, to which Rex opines that it's not a motorcycle's fault if a 'crumb' is riding it. Which is actually true. Anyway here are Paul Karo (as Tony Merrick) and Ken Sterling (as Alec Price) menacing, as I said, Aunt Olive (Neva Carr-Glynn who I just want to remind you is Nick Tate's mother). Check out the incredibly unconvincing outdoor scenes outside the windows. Deal with it. 

So is this Ken Sterling really the Ken Sterling? By which I mean the co-writer of Love Thy Neighbour in Australia with Vince Powell, the writer/performer of much of Doug Mulray's shizzle in the 70s-80s and then a painter of landscapes, now long dead? Well, could be, how often is IMDB wrong? Paul Karo, 'of Moroccan Jewish descent' says wikipedia, was later a regular cast member on The Box and apparently won the logie for best Australian actor in 1975. Who knew! Well, most people, then, I suppose. 

I just love Paul Karo's Ash Wednesday look in this show, eg:

Anyway that was a pretty good ep. But this one is ace too. It's called Motive for Two and is about a married couple, Brian (Leonard Teale) and Catherine (Benita Harvey) Leonardson, who live in Toorak and are rich because she owns a string of salons. She also has a string of lovers (we only see two of them, Eric and Ash) and he just observes and makes meek comments and mixes drinks and smokes cigarettes and calls her Kitty Cat. 

Kudos to Leonard Teale that (1) I know very well what Leonard Teale looks like (2) he had been a crim on Homicide only a few episodes previously and yet I didn't recognise him as the effete Brian. 

This is Brian wiping himself after Catherine throws a drink in his face because he has made it too weak. Now, she is a piece of work, but also, Eric has just come into the back yard and shot her in the swimming pool (ouch) so I guess she has reason to be a bit upset. 

This is just after Brian has gone to answer the front door to be told that Eric has given himself up to the police thinking he has killed Catherine and then he's come back to find Catherine smooching Ash, who is a racing car driver (natch) and the least developed character in this episode, frankly. Brian tolerates Catherine's affairs by the way or perhaps even actively encourages them, it's not clear. 

Now this is one of Catherine's salons. It's obviously a real business...

...as I am sure the admittedly excellent (not being sarcastic) Crawfords production team would not have had the resources to put together this as a window sign. I'd find out more about Coppelia Coiffure but for some reason the Sands and McDougalls directories which were so accessible online via the state library until a few weeks ago have now become extremely user-unfriendly. In the show they say this business is in Malvern Road Malvern (Terry McDermott pronounces 'Malvern' to rhyme with 'Alvin', for some reason). There was a Coppelia Coiffure in Box Hill according to the Age 6 June 1970 p. 56, so maybe it was a chain, and so all I wonder is did it tolerate being associated with this scandalous storyline or did it encourage it, was this even product placement? 

Anyway Catherine is finally murdered, electrocuted in her own salon. Here is Brian not caring that much with the salon's manager Margot who he briefly and off-the-cuffly brings in to be his alibi for the time that Catherine was probably dead, as long as the police believe the testimony of her two lovers, both of whom have reason to lie let's face it. (They think Eric's story that he found the salon in darkness stacks up because when he thought he had shot her he confessed straight away. However, let's be fair, he also did shoot at her, only a few days earlier, and in between that time and this it had become clear to him that if she wanted to steal all the money he had lent her, he didn't have a leg to stand on as there was no evidence she had taken it. But whatever, I'm a bit late to the party picking holes in this story I know). 

Forget about the ending to that one, it's not that important, starts well but ends boringly. This next one is a goodie though as it stars out in a farm in Bulla with one man nailing another inside a crate. Here's the crate being taken down Mount Alexander Road and almost falling out onto the road. This has to be just near Essendon station:

Don't quite know where this is, but I guess close to Moonee Ponds:

The crate being sent to a secure transfer station where a big fat crime is to be committed:

The man who was nailed inside the crate gets out, steals jewellery, knifes a nightwatchman, can't get out of the facility so gets back into the crate.

This nervous type is the dispatch clerk (played by John Godfrey) whose wife is about to have a baby and who has had a gambling problem in the past (but doesn't seem to have one anymore - who knows - but still needs or at least wants money). His name is Brian, because I guess as per the last episode, all weak men are called Brian. Her name is Nancy (a good, strong honest name) and she is played by Marie Redshaw.

The DVD really started glitching in the last ten minutes or so which doesn't bode well for the last one on this disc or perhaps it does as the whole thing is pretty interesting to watch, possibly more interesting than it might be otherwise, I can't know. 

Anyway I've spent way too long on all of this, especially as I said I wasn't going to keep tallying these up, I just find them so freakin' fascinating in so many ways. I mean what else is there to blog about? The Omicron variant? Scott Morrison? Nancy and Helmi? The weather? Idk

i wonder what brian mannix thinks

(This is another potential newspaper piece from a year or so ago that I couldn't figure out a proper ending for and never submitted anywhere. You know how it is. So that's why Mia only gets referred to as 'my wife' etc.)

It’s late for a weeknight, and I’m trying to get back home to Broadmeadows from Northcote in what looks like a straightforward fashion – tram towards Bundoora and then a Smart Bus via Keon Park. It being the 21^st century, I figure I could do worse than check when the next Smart Bus is coming, so I call metlink. I want, I tell a man, to get a bus to Airport West. He retreats behind muzak and announcements for five minutes and then returns. ‘You want to go to Melbourne Airport?’

Melbourne has a rich and extraordinary history, and its nomenclature is a big part of that. Settlers and public servants and developers and others have all played a part in attaching names to places – be it a place name (or random word) from an indigenous language, the name of an old homestead, an evocation of someone’s birthplace in Britain, or a prominent politician. All of these are legitimate to varying degrees.

Where problems arise are in similarities. Ten years ago my wife and I lived in Mincha Street, West Brunswick. Manica Street is two blocks away; both streets run north from Brunswick Road near the turn off to the Tulla. The number of times that people – taxi drivers, party goers, other general visitors – came to our door hoping it was 6 Manica Street became ridiculous (and that doesn’t include the number of times we got 6 Manica Street’s mail). Presumably 6 Manica got our mail and visitors too. What was perhaps strangest was the disbelief – even disgust and dismay – directed our way by others’ mistakes.

Those two streets have been two blocks apart for a hundred and twenty years, and surely hundreds of thousands of visitors have been confused by the similarity for more than a century. It’s only a couple of minutes to go from the right place to the wrong place; the errant visitors might even have become better people through learning to read not just the first and last letter of a name but also the letters in between. But it is, essentially, a confusion that did not ever have to happen.

Once, we lived in Hartwell; a friend coming to visit one Saturday afternoon got on the Altona train rather than the Alamein, and lost two hours. Well, anyone can half read a sign. But the electrification of the line from Broadmeadows to Craigieburn has given Melbourne a new soundalike: now there is a Craigieburn line and a Cranbourne line, and it would be a stretch to find two stations that were so far apart on the suburban system, yet sounded so similar. I have to confess, I’ve been caught out a couple of times listening to half-garbled train announcements or rushing to get to the right platform at Flinders Street. So imagine you’re new to Melbourne: how easy would it be to go wrong?

Why, for that matter, would you even suspect there was a difference between a bus to Airport West and Melbourne Airport? Let’s not even get onto Hampton vs. Hampton Park, or the several hundred ‘Railway Parades’ and ‘Victoria Streets’ in our fair city.

In many ways, there are strong similarities between these problems and those of the English language generally. We are told by fans of English’s peccadilloes that it is a rich and diverse patchwork of historical accidents that connect us to Chaucer and the Bard, and to lose any component of our language stew is to lose our intellectual heritage; at the same time, we’re told that English is always changing and shifting, and that’s part of the pleasure – the important thing being that there be no hand in control of the changes. Similarly, local place names have local meanings (even if, like English, they are often second-hand, distorted, half-understood or non-understood meanings) and these are not to be messed with. Cranbourne and Craigieburn: two appropriated British place names of tenuous value, which we cannot tamper with because they have always been and must ever be.

I’m positing that place names are there to distinguish places from each other. Putting Manica two streets away from Mincha was a short-sighted decision. One of those names (or, to be absolutely fair, both of them) should be changed. Craigieburn and Cranbourne should be changed, too, or railway lines should be named for their orientation (South West Line, North West Line, or Hume Line, or whatever). Airport West should get a name that acknowledges, firstly, that when most Melbournians (much less most tourists) think of an Airport, they don’t think about Essendon Airport, and secondly, Airport West is a really bad name for a perfectly pleasant suburb. This is not interfering with a rich tapestry: it’s redefining it to make it richer. It’s also an opportunity to come up with new names that recognize women, indigenous people, and other concepts that did not previously get a look in when naming decisions were made in the past.

No doubt television news can hit the streets when this article is published and vox pop three random Airport Westers whose first response will be ‘Why change Airport West? Everyone knows where Airport West is.’ But then perhaps someone could give them a few minutes to consider all the times in the past where confusion has reigned. The next step of course would be to proactively come up with an option that didn’t just designate a place as west of one of Melbourne’s many Airports which no-one thinks of as ‘the airport’ anymore. It’s easy – it can even be lucrative, stripping out prejudice towards places perceived, for no good reason, as low status – but no-one wants to bite the bullet (or perhaps, seem pretentious). I wonder what Brian Mannix thinks? 

essendon airport again

We had to take Millie back to the Essendon Animal Accident Emergency place again because our ordinary vets' was closed for Anzac Day (what would Simpson's Donkey have done?) and she needs her bandage changed every day (her progress is very good). So I had a few minutes so I went into the terminal. Much to my surprise, astonishment and awe it is very similar to Launceston Airport. You know what Launceston Airport's like? I felt like I was at Launceston Airport, true!

Weirdly, Essendon Airport is quite elevated, so that across the landing field you just see mountains. It is quite disorienting. There are over a million people in houses and other buildings between you and those mountains, but you can't see them.

essendon airport

One of the strange things about the place where Millie is hospitalised is that it is the (former, I suppose) Essendon Airport Terminal building. I don't know for a fact but since the various famous international bands of the 60s landed at Essendon Airport when they came to Melbourne (the Small Faces trip was, I think, notorious because there was the threat of prosecution when one of them opened a beer on the plane - or was that the Who?) you'd assume this was the building they passed through. Now I come to think of it the Queen of England, Elizabeth II, another celeb also landed there in '54. Well, now the place they probably walked through to a gaggle of admirers and press is an emergency animal hospital. Maybe it's the vibes of famous and talented people that Millie is soaking up and getting better on. This is not in itself a tremendously interesting video, it's just proof, though it is always funny when commentators have to commentate on things that aren't really happening. 'Nice wave from George there'. Good shots of the airport (or the 'drome' as the commentator calls it) buildings around the 8:00 mark but as I said, there's no need to watch it, particularly as I can't orientate myself enough to be able to say where the actual building I'm talking about is.

walk to the tram

Including evidence of current drought; creeping miasma of Gowanbrae; a plane heading for Essendon Airport; a bottle sticking a little way out of the ground leading one to wonder how much landfill is really processed at all; and pictures much darker than the world really was at the time I guess because the sun coming up was much brighter and the mobile phone camera is not particularly adjustable as far as I'm aware.